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The Writers

Kate Ansell

Kate Ansell works in a big office in West London, and writes occasional features for the BBC's Ouch! website. In between doing things which pay her rent, she is working on her first novel.

David Christopher

David Christopher was born in Hastings in 1981 and recently graduated from Lancaster University where he studied Management and Creative Writing. He has since had two short stories published and will begin work on his first novel when he's ready.

Stella Duffy

Stella Duffy has written seven novels and over twenty short stories, one of which won the 2002 CWA Short Story Award. Together with Lauren Henderson she is the co-editor of the anthology Tart Noir, published by Pan. She also writes for BBC Radio 4, and for the theatre. State of Happiness will be published by Virago Press in January 2004.

Sally Foote

Sally Foote was born in Cape Town, but got out before it went all trendy. She arrived in England in 1998 after a 2-year stint researching and writing documentaries in the Johannesburg Television Industry. Despite once being voted "Most likely to write a novel" by friends, she abandoned Journalism for the "joys" of IT and now works as a Systems Analyst. Efforts to continue to live creatively (albeit part-time) have thus far spawned several short stories and the opening chapters of her first novel.

Jules Gibson

Jules would describe himself as a social worker with an axe to grind, but not enough time to grind it. He's worked for a number of years with young people on the streets or in trouble with the law. His only published piece of writing was about where to play pool in London. He can't get anything else published because it's mostly about vulnerable humans lost in a world of public service bureaucracy, and if he did send it to a newspaper he'd either lose his job or be sectioned under the Mental Health Act. He's therefore trying his hand at writing short stories, on slightly more palatable subjects, but still laced with varying degrees of political sub-text.

Sally Hinchcliffe

Sally Hinchcliffe was born in London and is living there now, having recently returned from two years living and working in Swaziland. She is currently combining working at Kew Gardens with doing the Birkbeck Creative Writing MA and working on a novel.

Linda James

After modeling, singing and living abroad for 10 years, Linda James returned to the UK and lectured in English before becoming a full-time writer. She has had one book and a number of short stories and poems published. Now, she is concentrating on writing for the screen: she has written a number of feature films and co-written a psychological thriller for television. She also enjoys being the Creative Writing Tutor at The Camden Centre in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

Tracy Maylath

Tracy Maylath has an MA in Creative Writing from London University. For the last ten years she has been performing on the poetry circuit and is currently working on a collection of short stories and a novel. She has had work published in Rue Bella, Rising and The Illustrated Ape. Despite this, she hasn't yet managed to master the art of the biography.

Liz Rosen

Liz Rosen has published her short fiction and non-fiction in various publications. She has worked as an associate producer for television news and as a writer for Nickelodeon Television. In 1993 she won a Writer-in-Residence Fellowship at the Syvenna Foundation (Texas) and in 1994 was chosen by Glimmer Train as one of its top twenty-five new writers for their Short-Story Award for New Writers contest. Her short fiction appeared in Above Ground: an Anthology of Southern Writers, and has been read on the radio and at the Fifth International Conference on the Short Story. She is currently completing her Ph.D. in literature on contemporary apocalyptic fiction and film.

Imogen Salt

Imogen Salt is 29 and has been a poet for ages. She does readings in and around London and has been printed in Magma, Inclement and Rising. Once had a short erotic story published by Black Lace. Recently got a bit stuck with poems so wrote a story. Can only do really short things...got a short attention span. Just moved to Hastings.... is that enough?

Shelley Silas

Shelley was born in Calcutta and moved to London with her family when she was a child. She was a winner in the ICA's New Blood fiction competition (1996) with her short story Via Calcutta, published in the on-line anthology Endangered Species.

Shrapnel was produced by The Steam Industry at BAC (1999). Falling was at the Bush Theatre (2002) where Shelley was the Pearson writer-in-residence. Radio work includes devising and co-writing The Magpie Stories, Calcutta Kosher, The Sound Of Silence all for Radio Four. She is currently adapting (with John Harvey) Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet, which will be broadcast on Radio Four in 2005.

She is under commission to the Bush Theatre for Moses Mohammed, and Tamasha Theatre for Partitions. She has written a 90' film, The Wedding Dress, for Touchpaper TV. Shelley has compiled and is editing Twelve Days, an anthology to be published by Virago in November 2004.

Christopher Simpson

Christopher Simpson is best known for his work as an actor, performing in television, theatre, film and radio. His most recent performances include: the twins Millat and Magid in "White Teeth" and Sam in "Second Generation" for Channel Four; Paul in Michael Winterbottom's film "Code 46"; Omar in Tanika Gupta's "Fragile Land" at the Hampstead Theatre and Pericles in a site specific co-production with the Royal Shakespeare Company and Cardboard Citizens. Christopher has written a one-man-show, 'Yet I Rise' performed in London, Paris and Dublin, a documentary, 'Other', for BBC Radio Four as well numerous short stories. He is currently working on a novel, researching a new one-man-show and a television documentary revisiting Rwanda ten years since the genocide.

Ali Smith

Ali Smith was born in 1962 in Inverness and lives in Cambridge. Her most recent collection of stories is The Whole Story and Other Stories (Hamish Hamilton).

Ashley Stokes

Ashley Stokes was born in 1970 and was educated at St. Anne's College, Oxford and the University of East Anglia, where he took an MA in Creative Writing. He now teaches creative writing at UEA and for the Open College of the Arts. His stories have appeared in, among others, Pretext, EM, London Magazine, Spiked, and England Calling. He has written book reviews for The Guardian, the TLS, the Daily Telegraph, The Big Issue and The Good Book Guide. He won a 2002 Bridport Short Story Prize for The Suspicion of Bones. He's currently writing a novel, The Hazel Phase, and has co-written a screenplay, Exhuming Meacock.

Kit Whitfield

Kit Whitfield holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, where she studied under W.G. Sebald and Andrew Motion. As well as having several short stories anthologised, she is the author of numerous cute non-fiction books, some written under a pen name, and a lot of sales copy. She is currently re-drafting her first novel, which is a literary thriller about werewolves, if you can imagine such a thing.

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